Hydrophobia
by Gnimaerd
Summary: Sometimes he wakes up with imagined blood on his fingers and thinks of a dying-sunset future that could have been without a boy who had cold blue eyes and a shadowed man that trailed his every move. This is the story of Nate River and how he watched The Boy take over the world.
1. A Foreword of Sorts, An Introduction

When I saw him for the first time, I knew that things would begin to go wrong. I do not believe in ridiculous things, things that could be classified as supernatural and things belonging in works of fiction. I believe in facts, and what I ought to believe in within this realm, this world.

I believe in the color white. I like the stoic feeling it gives, the feeling that you do not need color in order for one to express knowledge, creativity-And the ability to build.

And I believe in that when I first saw the boy whose name was originally Ciel Phantomhive at nine years and three months old exactly, I had known that things were about to go very, very wrong. It was hard to define him in an exact way of logic and certainty, and that made him dangerous. Dangerous in an inexplicable way, dangerous in the way that water is dangerous when you are drowning and you do not know how to swim... And the shadows creep for your feet to drag you under.

The Boy, as I shall henceforth call him because names are silly things that you should not classify with such a creature of nature: He is great, in a way that the darkness that falls when night comes is great. He is not strong purely in an intellectual way, but he has a force of mind that is eerily similar to the water that drowns you, in a way that he will wear down everything within his path.

He will not wait. He will not tire. And he will not fail.


	2. Chapter One: Memory

_Chapter one: Memory_

* * *

_MEMORY |ˈmem(ə)rē|noun ( pl. -ries)1 a person's power to remember things  
• the power of the mind to remember things  
• the mind regarded as a store of things remembered  
• the capacity of a substance to return to a previous state or conditionafter having been altered or deformed. _

_2 something remembered from the past; a recollection  
__• the length of time over which people continue to remember a person or event  
__• the remembering or recollection of a dead person, esp. one who was popular or respected  
_

_3 the part of a computer in which data or program instructions can be stored for retrieval.• capacity for storing information in this way  
_

* * *

I stare today up at the terrible blankness of the white lights that shine into my room, And I know is that nothing here is real. White, the nothing-color has become everything, everything to me but the cold metal steel that makes the frame of my bed. The curtains are white; _I _am white.

Madness is a terrible thing.

_("Hey Jude, begin…" The cold of the airport bites through the soft cotton of my clothes, and blue eyes haze over in confusion briefly before becoming cold and clear as they are meant to be)_

I shift on the linens, vaguely registering the cold bite of pain of the bedframe against my back. I can feel my spine, knobby as it is as I do so. Closing my eyes and breathing in stale air, I know I am living, but only just.

_(Will you kill me, now?)_

Then I open my eyes, and stare into the vastness of the room before me; An illusion that my own mind has made. I know that it's a square 25 foot cell, I've counted the feet and made the hands. And though I know it's an illusion, it seems so _wide, _because the not-color of white stays with me always whether it be day or night, mocking me with long hands that do not exist, along with the phantom scent of sunshine that has not ever reached this godforsaken shell of existence. It _mocks_ me. _(Insanity will surround me, little by little. Just as this absence of color has done.)_

Restlessly, I roll with the cold metal that bites into the boning edges of my back.

And not even _people _with their dull lives come to break the monotony, _no one comes_ beyond the sheet of white glass on the opposite end of the room, beyond that stretch of white wall behind it. If they do, they give me plates of _food_ as they stare at me with blank features and eyes, as if one would stare at an animal.

My hands fist, and the mind makes the old argument to no one in particular: It is not food I need, but _color _and _escape_ from this slow torture. Even L, with his faded colors or Mellowith his brashnesswould have been welcome, but one is gone and the other more so. True, they treated me like an animal just as _they_ do, but it hardly matters in comparison to the silence that I am currently receiving.

I slump, listless now.

If I was a dangerous animal, then I ought to be shot and put to death.

But no such thing will come to be, because _he _decreed it. _He _with the cold blue eyes that see everything, the omniscient hands and the reverence of shadows that follow him wherever he goes. (_He _watches_ us now, with eyes that see all from the white corner…) ("Yes, my lord.") (Laughter, a breeze on a hilltop. "I'm Human—" And I know it's a lie, despite the logic that calls for otherwise)_

I shudder, then shake violently, at the implications… huddling, _curling_ into myself…Away from the bright lights, those bright whitelights that reveal everything, anything. Everything I am.

Oh, but anything is better than water. Water will take….And destroy…And it will sweep anything in it's path…

Still shaking, I blindly face the lights.

At times…When _they _leave me alone, I wonder if they know that it drives me to further insanity to be left like this, when there's nothing here any longer but me and I and my thoughts and _memories._ It is in vain I burrow myself deeper into myself_,_ swathing myself in terrible blankness and white nothing in order to forget…The eyes colored like dark water and the shadows that always trailed behind them.

_("Surely, you must of known?" That man asked me with that so falsely worried stare, his red eyes dancing like the flame of a fire trapped within the stillness of a ruby.)_

Of course I knew, I _knew _and _knew _back then but there wasn't anything to do against the water, which will sweep everything away in its path. Nor the shadows, taking everything away from you. _How _could have I not _known_? The idea is laughable. I shake with fear, with loneliness and _laughter._

_(I remember everything from that day. That day, when the Boy came and began wiping everything away.)_

Just as I did know, all of those years ago. (Pitter.) I wonder if I'm being slowly driven mad _again_. (Patter_.) I think it's raining outside again._ I can't tell. I'm in an eggshell. (Patter.) I wonder if it should matter. (Pitterpatterpitter-)

* * *

It's raining outside, for perhaps the umpteenth time this month. It's a testament to the English art of resilience that we weren't driven out of these wetlands long ago, I think. Then again, there is an art to rain as well... Falling as it does outside, it's no wonder why our orphanage grounds are so lush. Not that I care, or go outside often.

Leave me to puzzles and rubix cubes, for they are all the life and color I need-Endless building, little stories made out of card houses and other things. The cold plastic of my robots are unforgiving and so commercial, and that's quite comforting. It's a testament to progress of the human race.

_(Warm blankets and the smell of sunshine, as I dream of building upon an endless sea of white) _

Click, goes the puzzle I am currently working on. My hand is automatically attracted to a wild curling of hair, and I finger it with a light smile because I can.

And then the door opens from outside, and the sound is unusual enough that it startles my attention to it. I watch, curious as a small boy walks through, drenched from the rain.

And there is a tall man that follows him in, clad head-to-toe in black.

But there is no one else. Not Whammy, not Roger. No government official. No one. No one actually bringing them to this place, which strikes me deeply. It's not like Whammy's House is easily accessible, after all... L saw to that, as did Whammy. My fingers smooth over the puzzle pieces, a quick motion. These strangers, who are they? I look at them, quietly deducing what I can from them.

The boy is wet, clearly he has no umbrella, nor does his companion. He is clad in clothes that don't fit him; he's been clothed in them for a long amount of time—A few days, maybe. They belong to his companion; too long to belong to anyone else. He has no one else to supply them to him.

He is an orphan.

He was _just _orphaned. (There are bandages on his fingers, peeking out of the sleeve of the coat. His hair is still holding very faint blackened edges, as if clinging to soot.)

He tilts his head, with a half-cruel smirk on his lips while looking at his companion—And quite suddenly the thought comes to me that though he is very young, he seems very, very_ old _in truth. As I puzzle this, another thought comes: No orphan child is ever _proud_, bowed by the emotions of grief and regret as they often are…

That is not a child.

Disturbed by the illogical turn of my thoughts, I turn my gaze to his companion instead. But he too is inhumanly beautiful, only with a kind of darkness—Though surely, that must be an optical impression from the coat. He is following the boy walking by with a sort of careful reverence, which strikes as odd. But it's glaringly obvious, the unwavering, complete deference he has towards _this_ boy. And it had to _build in the first place._

... Where?

The man in black looks at me, and suddenly an unwilling shiver runs down my spine. For I am quite sure that his eyes are red. _Red,_ like how rubies are red. They shone, too—With the fluidity of fire.

But then he looked away, and I could breath again.

This was my first glimpse of The Boy.


	3. Chapter Two: Trickle

_Chapter Two: Trickle_

* * *

_TRICKLE |ˈtrikəl|verb [ no obj. ](of a liquid) flow in a small stream: a solitary tear trickled down her cheek | (as ) : a trickling brook._

_• [ with obj. ] Cause (a liquid) to flow in a small stream: he trickled the vodka onto the rocks.• come or go slowly or gradually: the details began to trickle out. Noun: a small flow of liquid: a trickle of blood._

_• A small group or number of people or things moving slowly: The traffic had dwindled to a VERB: Strickle down (of wealth) gradually benefit the poorest as a result of the increasing wealth of the richest. _

_ORIGIN Middle English (as a verb): imitative._

* * *

_10_

It is his second day here, and already I feel the ripples in command. _(Whispers in the cafeteria, looks in the classroom, sparks of admiration beginning to slowly shine through the initial assessments: a boy, alias Matt actually takes his gaze off of his games to look at the games being set in motion in_ reality) Though panic and flights of fancy have slowed back down into calm and rationality, I feel that he should not be here.

Because, _despite_ all of this, the ripples... The Boy was not a genius.

The Boy smiles at Linda, compliments her handiwork while they sit in a sun-lit window together. Linda's blushing a little now, though I doubt she notices. _(Her eyes are dilated and her pulse jumps in her throat.)_ She's pleased though, and that's sure to find an echo-Though I'm sure it's not what she'd be looking for. _(His eyes are cool, cold. They care for only certain things. She, a child artist is not one of those things.)_

I place a piece of my blank puzzle together.

The boy's chosen alias is Earl and I find myself wondering why he picked it, a name that is so American and noticeable, particularly in Britain. Judging by the accent alone, he's London-bred and born.

"Oh, It's alright-Nothing special. Just… Why don't you wear blue? I'm sure it'll go much better with those eyes of yours; you'd get a better picture if you did."

The hesitance is marked, coming from The Boy-It draws my attention and holds it, and for a moment I see those blue eyes slide towards me, marking the movements I make. It's almost innocently done on his cool, porcelain doll face. _(Faces on a human should be human. Perfect faces can mean monsters.)_

"I will," He assures Linda, and she smiles again and the moment is broken.

_(But The Boy has been wearing black, and only black since he arrived. Is he mourning? He is not mourning; his eyes do not show pain, even when he arrived. He is prideful and he is arrogant, and he does not mourn for his parents.)_

My mouth tightens and releases and I reach for another piece of a puzzle.

_16_

When Mello takes off The Boy's eyepatch for the first time in a lonely office building, it is a _moment._ There are ten men under his command behind him, all of them supporting this young new boss-Expecting everything.

"Sebastian," The Boy merely utters, opening a glowing eye of violet-

The cameras blank out, and when they come back into vision for me, there is a single silver butter knife in my old classmates' head. Blood soaks the carpeted floor; his mens' throats are slit.

The man with ruby red eyes is helping his master into a knee-length jacket of dark blue. It was lying neatly, folded on a desk.

_("Why don't you wear blue?" Linda asks during a sun-lit afternoon.)_

_10_

"Do you like it here?" Another boy asks The Boy, grey eyes wide with curiosity. His alias is Diamond, and The Boy almost-smiles at him, passing over his notes on Quantum Physics. As every genius is different, age no longer matters for classes-Intelligence does. It's not unusual for many of the orphans to have special classes dedicated to them.

"I suppose," The Boy answers non-commitally, and inclines his head in gratitude as Diamond passes his own notes on Mythology.

I frown from my place on the floor, a few bookcases down. Diamond was a semi-cheerful boy, around the same age as The Boy. On the surface, at first glance one would think that they could be cut from the same cloth: It was obvious both of them were born to wealth; Diamond with his Aramani vests and knickerboxers, and The Boy with his sober suits. They lived in them, refusing to wear loungewear despite almost never getting opportunities to wear their luxury wear outside.

But in watching the chip of diamond swing from a pendant around Diamond's neck, it could become very quickly apparent that despite their similar attires, they were very, very different.

Diamond cried in his room for three days after his initial arrival, holding onto the last thing of his past-A single diamond earring from his mother. The Boy, on the contrary cleaned himself quietly for two hours in his bedroom, and emerged smelling of soap and fresh laundry. There was no change in his expression. He asked for clothes, and prepared for classes. There were no signs of grief._ (No emotion.)_

_19_

For the first time in years, tears unsteadily dripped down his face like thin icicles in the cold wind.

Whammy's Orphanage had been gone a long while ago, and with it the boy who occasionally studied in the Library with another boy named Earl. Mikhail, The Knight of Diamonds remained in his place- The man only ever identified by a single diamond chip in his ear.

He was an agent for hire, a conman, a rabble-rouser, a game-player in the politics of the world-And the last person to know who could possibly replace L and restore old balance to the new world.

His hair, which were tight blond curls in his youth had relaxed over time to a loose wave, pliable to his whims. It had been dyed red this time around for a job. But, this wasn't a job. It was just a time and place to die.

The boy that used to go only as Diamond watched soundlessly as Earl walked closer, closer to him, his feet clacking on the hard marble steps up a large department store in New York. A blue eye shined in the darkness, and Diamond felt a chill go down his arms. This man wasn't the boy he knew in Whammy Orphanage.

_(I suppose so)_

_"Please don't be upset, D." _Near crackled in his ear, monotone. _"You are only to meet him and leave. You will accept his offer of a job. That is all." _Diamond knew better than to nod to the bluetooth stuck in his ear, so he was silent.

"Thank you," Quite simply, was all he heard before the bullet ripped through his heart.

Diamond dropped dead to the icy white marble, dark blood staining his lapel pin. The Boy, Alias Earl stood there silently, coat fluttering slightly in the wind like wings. His hand held a smoking gun. After a few moments, he lifted his head to peer up at the vast building before him. "Don't dawdle, Sebastian. Hurry up."

Another flutter of wings, and the doors of the department store opened to reveal the dark man of Near's youth. "Yes, sir." Sebastian said, as if he had heard. Near frowned, dismissing the death of his classmate for a moment. Surely, The Boy didn't have a bluetooth of his own?

"My regards to N," The Boy merely said before he went.

* * *

In time to his memory-self, Near cursed. There was a touch of extra bitterness now, because he knew- Would always know absolutely now-What came next.


End file.
